HorsesAss.Org

Credit: Clifford DesPeaux/Seattle P-I

Honestly, this never would happen on light rail.

I’ve written about it before, but never in such detail as Paper Noose at Blogging Georgetown… the bizarre, semi-secret way we elect the King County Conservation District board. This is the only kind of election the righties win around here anymore — you know, the kind almost nobody votes in.

Join the fun at 3Trillion.org.

April 17, 2008 – LOS ANGELES – Fox News channel is debuting a new show next week called “Fox’s PC Police.” The half-hour show will be a daily recap of all the groups who have recently been offended by Barack Obama. Hosted by Michelle Malkin, the first week of shows covers how Obama has offended Amway salesmen, CPAs, the University of Utah field hockey team, John Wayne’s ghost, KLM stewardesses, and Brit Hume’s cat “Whiskers.”

The show will also feature several other daily and regular segments.

John Gibson will frequently join Malkin in the studio in order to show clips of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons and to explain how Bill Cosby would lecture Wright on how to be a civilized black person.

Brent Bozell III will host a segment called “Panties in a Bunch” where he will point out how Satan’s influence is destroying your children through your television set.

And finally, Charles Krauthammer and Bill Donohue will have a daily debate called “The Victim-Off,” where the two men argue over whether American Jews or American Catholics are the most persecuted people on the planet. The only thing they will agree on is that African-Americans, Palestinians, and gays have absolutely no reason to be angry and should stop playing the victim card all the time.

Now that the show has been previewed by select members of the press, the show already has a higher viewership than The Glenn Beck Program.

No joke… Democrat George Fearing outraised incumbent Republican Doc Hastings in the first quarter, $38,000 to $33,000. Hastings still has big cash on hand lead, but it’s not so big that Fearing can’t get on a level playing field. And this is WA-04 for chissakes.

Jimmy’s got the details.

Yesterday I announced my second annual HA Pledge Week with an ambitious goal of $6000 from 150 readers… and in the first 24 hours we raised $945 from 16 contributors. That’s a great start. A big thanks to everybody who has contributed thus far.

This pledge drive is crucial for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that maintaining HA has become a full time job, and for the moment, my only source of regular income. The ads you see and the contributions you make are what permit me to pay my bills and keep on blogging. But I also have ambitious plans to expand HA over the coming months, and your demonstrated commitment will make it all the more possible for me to raise the kind of money necessary to make my vision a reality.

If HA has become a regular part of your daily routine, please show your appreciation by contributing today. And if you believe we need more progressive media, not less, then your contribution is all the more important.

New meaning was given to the expression “happy birthday, and many happy returns” in this birthday/tax day edition of Podcasting Liberally.

Joining The Birthday Boy (who has no business pushing their buttons, some Righties claim) was a taxing panel of political bloggers and boisterous blowhards: Will, Lee, Carl, and Nick.

They begin with a bitter discussion of “bittergate,” and a better discussion of a bitter Rossi’s budget busting “Progressive” Transportation “Plan” fantasy. Next the bloggers barked at Reichert’s sub-prime fundraising bust and boasted about Burner’s better fundraising bonanza. There was some banter about the Colombia trade deal and bellyaching about the Sonics, too.

The show is 54:46, and is available here as a 51.3 MB MP3.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_april_15_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

Remember all those funny acronyms from last fall’s mainstream media coverage of the Roads and Transit campaign? YOE, for year of expenditure was a favorite of many of Seattle’s newspaper writers and columnists. They were fixated (examples here, here, and here) on slapping the Roads and Transit plan with as high a price tag as they could by including inflation into the total price tag of the plan, not just the price tag in current year dollars. By doing so, they held the Roads and Transit plan to a standard never before seen for a tax measure or capital construction program in our region.

Yesterday Dino Rossi released his transportation fantasy and said it would cost $15.5 billion in 2007 dollars. Keep in mind, that’s in last year’s dollars.

I have done a little bit of “back of the envelope” math (you know the kind that Rossi’s Republican, anti-light rail pals did when they fed the media their scary cost numbers on Prop 1) and the results I get are staggering. Rossi’s $15.5 billion plan, when you account for 4 percent annual inflation over a 30 year construction schedule, suddenly balloons to $50 billion dollars. And this doesn’t even include the interest on the bonds that would be needed to finance all of Rossi’s made up project cost estimates. So we would have to add all of the interest payments to the $50 billion number to get the true cost, well at least according to our friends in the “traditional media.”

You can do the math yourself with this handy little inflation calculator.

UPDATE [Lee]: This part from a post by Martin at the Seattle Transit Blog made me laugh:

So I looked to Dino Rossi’s Transportation Plan with hope and anticipation. I shouldn’t have. This document was first sent to me by a Gregoire operative; when your own campaign literature is being gleefully distributed by the other side, that’s a bad sign.

I haven’t yet had the time to study Dino Rossi’s newly unveiled transportation “plan,” but one element immediately leaped out at me:

Rossi proposed funding high-occupancy-vehicle projects on the Eastside by tapping Sound Transit money that would otherwise be used mainly to build a light-rail line from downtown Bellevue to Seattle.

Of course, such a proposal may have a certain appeal to Rossi’s anti-rail constituency, but if he really wants to be governor I suggest he put down those Discovery Institute and Washington Policy Center briefing papers, and take a little time reading the state Constitution:

ARTICLE XI, SECTION 12: ASSESSMENT AND COLLECTION OF TAXES IN MUNICIPALITIES.
The legislature shall have no power to impose taxes upon counties, cities, towns or other municipal corporations, or upon the inhabitants or property thereof, for county, city, town, or other municipal purposes, but may, by general laws, vest in the corporate authorities thereof, the power to assess and collect taxes for such purposes.

Um, see Dino, Sound Transit is a local government with local taxing authority, and the state simply cannot direct it how to use its revenue or its surplus. Local voters authorized ST to raise this money for a specific purpose, and only local voters can redirect these funds. Who is your legal adviser… Tim Eyman?

Promising to do something and having the legal authority to do something are two different things.

Hey local media… I haven’t seen much coverage yet of Reichert’s awful fundraising quarter. Um… FYI… he’s the incumbent.

Just thought you should know.

UPDATE:
As much as I hate to correct Postman — and in this case, I really, really, really hate to correct him — Reichert raised $331K for the quarter, not $240K. It’s confusing, because this time around Reichert reported the take from his Laura Bush funder using a separate joint committee, the way you’re supposed to… and who could possibly have anticipated that?

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Over on (u)SP my new friend Eric seems to get it: “8th CD Fundraising is Troublesome.” Well, it is if you’re Reichert.

The Seahawks regular season schedule is out:

Sun Sept. 7 at Buffalo Bills – 10:00 a.m.
Sun Sept. 14 San Francisco 49ers – 1:05 p.m.
Sun Sept. 21 St. Louis Rams – 1:05 p.m.
Sun Sept. 28 BYE
Sun Oct. 5 at N.Y. Giants – 10:05 a.m.
Sun Oct. 12 Green Bay Packers – 1:15 p.m.
Sun Oct. 19 at Tampa Bay Buccaneers – 5:15 p.m.
Sun Oct. 26 at San Francisco 49ers – 1:15 p.m.
Sun Nov. 2 Philadelphia Eagles – 1:15 p.m.
Sun Nov. 9 at Miami Dolphins – 10:00 a.m.
Sun Nov. 16 Arizona Cardinals – 1:05 p.m.
Sun Nov. 23 Washington Redskins – 1:15 p.m.
Thu Nov. 27 at Dallas Cowboys – 1:15 p.m. (Thanksgiving Day)
Sun Dec. 7 New England Patriots – 5:15 p.m.
Sun Dec. 14 at St. Louis Rams – 10:00 a.m.
Sun Dec. 21 N.Y. Jets – 1:05 p.m.
Sun Dec. 28 at Arizona Cardinals – 1:15 p.m.

The numbers are in, and they don’t look too good for Dave Reichert, with challenger Darcy Burner expanding her lead over “Congressman 401” in the much watched category of cash on hand. Reichert raised only $331,000 in the first quarter, compared to the impressive $517,000 hauled in by Burner, who now leads Reichert $922,000 to $698,000 in cash on hand.

And that’s with a fundraising visit from the First Lady. Pathetic.

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, although some of us will show up a little early for dinner.

Tonight we will have double-header of theme songs by the Beatles: Birthday, in honor of Mr. Goldstein’s 45th and Tax Man, just to remind us of the $31,000 in deferred taxes we each owe on the $9.4 trillion dollar national debt. (Thanks kids and grandkids!)

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally . Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.